The Fall
The Garden breathes like a living thing tonight, eighteen thousand throats roaring in unison, and Jake Thompson stands in the center of it, drenched in sweat and light, feeling invincible.
Round seven. His record reads eleven and oh, a number that glows above the arena's Jumbotron like a promise he's kept eleven times over. Tonight makes twelve. It has to.
Marcus Vale hits like a freight train wrapped in silk—smooth footwork, heavy hands, the kind of fighter who makes you pay for every mistake with interest. Jake's cheekbone throbs where a left hook caught him in round four, and his ribs ache on the right side from an uppercut he didn't see coming until it arrived. But he's still standing. Still moving. Still dictating the pace the way his father taught him before arthritis stole the old man's hands and turned him into a spectator instead of a corner man.
"Stay on him, Jake!" His trainer, Deshawn, screams from ringside, voice cutting through the din like a blade. "Cut the angle, cut the angle!"
Jake slips a jab, feels the wind of it brush past his ear, and answers with a combination that lands clean—one-two, body-head, the crowd erupting as Vale staggers backward into the…